The Shoot: Professional Wrestling's Weekly Recap

The Bash Has Few Surprises, TNA Growing Stale.

Well, it was another normal week in wrestling, headlined by a Pay-Per-View event to close the week in WWE.

WWE

The Bash left many heads shaking a little, and gave us some ideas where the company is going to go with some characters. It also left us wondering how much more Triple H. vs. Randy Orton we are going to have to see.

Smackdown's creative team is clearly happy with the CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy feud, and I must say, this feud is the best in the business right now.

The way CM Punk is "uncontrollably" doing heel things is perfect. His four-star match with John Morrison on Friday Night (probably the best TV match so far this year) was brilliantly written.

To have him attack Morrison after the loss and then act like he can't help himself is setting up a classic SLOW heel turn.

The World Heavyweight Championship match at The Bash was fairly good, but not as spectacular a match as I think the Charismatic Enigma and Punk can give us, but again a perfect ending.

Punk is doing everything he can to keep his title AND show he deserves it (that is why the loss to Morrison upset him so much), and in the process is doing things "out of character."

I am very interested to see where this feud goes this weekend.

The rest of SD! also had a stellar week.

Chris Jericho and Rey Mysterio absolutely stole the show Sunday night. This match was MAGNIFICENT, and Rey Rey did it all with TWO masks on! You might not see a better one-on-one match the rest of this year.

With Rey winning and taking the Intercontinental Championship, they moved Y2J into another program by giving him the Tag Team titles with Edge.

This is a good move. While Punk and Hardy are tearing up the main event, Edge and Y2J (two of the top guys in the world) will help make the tag titles relevant again.

It was time for Jericho to move on from Mysterio, though they will likely go at it a little more. Jericho also showed he is the consummate performer by putting on a stellar match with Rey Rey, and then turning around and winning the tag titles with Edge.

ECW continued to be solid as The Hart Dynasty is probably the best faction in wrestling right now.

The Scramble match for the ECW title was solid at The Bash, and I like that Tommy Dreamer will hold it until at least SummerSlam. I really like those Scramble Matches for some reason. 

While the other two shows continue to be superb, RAW continues to disappoint.

The commercial-free episode provided solid ratings and some entertainment, but all in all, Randy Orton vs. Triple H. (which once was GREAT) has become boring and stale, and they need to elevate someone like MVP as soon as possible.

The match between John Cena and The Miz really should not have been a squash match. It makes little sense to me why they would do that, as The Miz is getting such good heat, and could really take this as a rub to the top of the card.

I hope it is, because they are going to continue the feud a little longer with The Miz really taking to heart that he needs to bring his A-game to face Cena.

I personally think they HAVE to get Cena involved in the WWE Championship scene, but if they don't, they really need to use this as a chance to get The Miz up the card.

The rest of RAW is a bunch of "almost there" performers. At some point MVP, Kofi Kingston, or Matt Hardy is likely to get a move up the card. I personally hope it is MVP.

I think MVP has strong in-ring work, and he is obviously great on the mic. He just has not been built up as a believable top-tier guy yet. Hopefully they work with that a little more, and we can see some fresh feuds out of it.

All-in-all, it was a busy week for WWE, but the top champs remain the same, and the top feuds remain the same. One of them is intriguing and riveting, the other, stale and boring.

TNA

This will be a short synopsis this week, because TNA is completely losing my attention.

One month after giving "control" of the Main Event Mafia to Sting, he is kicked out? This really made the Sacrifice match look like it was for NOTHING.

Samoa Joe and Matt Morgan standing side-by-side with the Mafia? Really?

Joe's entire motivation was money? Just ridiculous.

These guys broke his arm and tried to end his career. It was less than a year ago for crying out loud. Now he comes back and jumps on board with them?

They might try to double-swerve later, saying he was never really with them and pretended so that he could get inside and blow them up, but that is just getting too convoluted. 

This is all Vince Russo storyline here. He completely lacks the ability to think six months down the road, and is always thinking of the best way he can shock the world today.

Well yes, Vince, Samoa's turn shocked us because it makes absolutely no sense.

I have no problem with Samoa Joe turning heel, but all heels do not have to be in the Main Event Mafia for it to work.

I am guessing we will see Sting get a shot at Kurt Angle's title at some point after Angle fends off Mick Foley in a rematch.

But I don't know and don't really care much at this point, and that means TNA is not doing their job very well.

As for the rest of the show, the Knockouts continue to be exceptional in the ring, and nice to look at out of it.

I love the Angelina Love title run, and think that it is really making the whole rest of the division look good as they desperately chase after her with hate-filled eyes.

Ring of Honor

It was nice to see Ring of Honor television acknowledge the new World Heavyweight Champion Austin Aries.

It was a solid show this week after some television tapings to freshen things up.

The Main Event of this week's show featured ROH tag champs The American Wolves retaining against Bryan Danielson and Tyler Black.

The ending made it seem as though the Danielson vs. Black feud will continue for a while, which is a good thing for all Ring of Honor fans.

Weekly Rankings

A decent shake up this week as Jericho reminded us of how great he is, a couple of WWE tag teams get back into the mix and Punk retains.

WWE—1. Jeff Hardy 2. CM Punk (WHC) 3. Randy Orton (WWE) 4. Chris Jericho 5. Edge 6. John Cena 7. Triple H 8. Rey Mysterio (IC Champ) 9. Tommy Dreamer (ECW) 10. Christian

TNA—1. Kurt Angle (TNA Champ) 2. AJ Styles (Legends Champ) 3. Samoa Joe 4. Sting 5. Suicide (X-D Champ) 6. Jeff Jarrett 7. Jay Lethal 8. Beer Money Inc. (TNA Tag Champs) 9. Daniels 10. Alex Shelley

Tag Team—1. Beer Money Inc. 2. Team 3D 3. The Hart Dynasty 4. Edge and Chris Jericho (WWE Champs) 5. Motor City Machine Guns

Overall—1. Jeff Hardy 2. CM Punk 3. Randy Orton 4. Kurt Angle 5. Chris Jericho 6. AJ Styles 7. Edge 8. John Cena 9. Austin Aries (ROH Champ) 10. Samoa Joe